My oldest sister visited our hometown and tells me that my younger sister is extremely thin and buying cases of ensure. My young son was in the room. I told her that my sister had suffered from anorexia nervosa before her first daughter was born. The condition resolved when she was pregnant. By the end of her pregnancy she was 170 lbs.
I lived with my younger sister and her crack addicted husband at the time. She must have weighed 89 lbs--or less--when she lost her appetite after hurting her back in a care accident. She looked like a skeleton with skin on it. I tried to have her committed to a treatment center but the lady on the other end of the phone said since she was thirty she would have to sign herself in. I sighed, hung up the phone and began to envy her girlish figure.
That was about 25 years ago. She's always been small. But, the stooped over figure with the pail, paper thin skin that I see in slacks and a way too big sweatshirt, is too excruciatingly familiar to want to look at. But I examine it...eyes glued to the image trying to recognize my younger sister.
"She will die if she doesn't eat", I blurt out.
"We shouldn't discuss this in front of him", she says.
"Who?" I ask.
"Dante. He's too young and that's too much information".
"What? Talking about death?"
She stares.
"It's a fact that if you do not eat, you will die. Anything that starves, dies."
As sick as my family is. I'm always surprised when they do something or say something crazy. My son hears about death every single damned day. He hears about it on the news, in song. Sees it in movies and on the news. We just went to one of my aunts funerals a couple of weeks ago. Road kill litters the highways, parking lots and cul-de-sacs in the neighborhood.
Maybe, I didn't get the memo.
I lived with my younger sister and her crack addicted husband at the time. She must have weighed 89 lbs--or less--when she lost her appetite after hurting her back in a care accident. She looked like a skeleton with skin on it. I tried to have her committed to a treatment center but the lady on the other end of the phone said since she was thirty she would have to sign herself in. I sighed, hung up the phone and began to envy her girlish figure.
That was about 25 years ago. She's always been small. But, the stooped over figure with the pail, paper thin skin that I see in slacks and a way too big sweatshirt, is too excruciatingly familiar to want to look at. But I examine it...eyes glued to the image trying to recognize my younger sister.
"She will die if she doesn't eat", I blurt out.
"We shouldn't discuss this in front of him", she says.
"Who?" I ask.
"Dante. He's too young and that's too much information".
"What? Talking about death?"
She stares.
"It's a fact that if you do not eat, you will die. Anything that starves, dies."
As sick as my family is. I'm always surprised when they do something or say something crazy. My son hears about death every single damned day. He hears about it on the news, in song. Sees it in movies and on the news. We just went to one of my aunts funerals a couple of weeks ago. Road kill litters the highways, parking lots and cul-de-sacs in the neighborhood.
Maybe, I didn't get the memo.
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